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TouchPoints TV is a periodic video podcast which covers the Retail Industry and offers insights from leading executives on emerging strategies, innovative products and services, and recent retail news. Subscribe to the feed and stay in touch with the latest retail happenings.

Let's face it: "omnichannel retail" is a term constantly thrown around the industry. In fact, it's thrown around so much that it's starting to annoy some executives and analysts. But do we know what omnichannel really means? What does it require from a technology, infrastructure and organizational structure standpoint? During this episode of TouchPoints TV, Brion Reusche of RSM explains that it's time for retailers get real about omnichannel. It's not just about the bells, whistles and high-tech gadgets; retailers instead need to focus on the foundational elements of a successful strategy in order to see success.

In this episode of TouchPoints TV, Ed Jimenez, Global Retail Director at Cisco, talks about new demands in flexible fulfillment, how mobile can transform the shopping experience and engaging consumers entering their store.

Worldwide growth of mobile POS acceptance is fueling growth in the receipt printer market, particularly as mobile POS is increasingly adopted by Tier 1 and Tier 2 retailers. These larger-footprint retailers want to provide checkout services throughout their stores, not just at the traditional checkout lanes, according to Gregg Brunnick, Director of Product Management, Epson America. With printers that can connect to the cloud via Epson's OmniLink Merchant Services, "It's added intelligence to the receipt printer, allowing retailers to access best-of-breed loyalty programs, data analytics, inventory management, etc.," said Brunnick in a video interview at NRF 2017. "The addition of processing power and memory means it's not just a receipt printer anymore, it's a small computer sitting on the counter." Brunnick also shared insights on the slow pace of digital receipt acceptance with Retail TouchPoints Editorial Director Andrew Gaffney.

Retail marketers' roles and responsibilities have changed forever. They're no longer just tasked with sending blast emails and one-size-fits-all ads to customer segments. Instead, marketers need to understand consumers' unique cross-channel behaviors, and craft timely and relevant marketing campaigns that resonate with them on a deeper level. During this episode of TouchPoints TV, Daniel Eisenhut, VP of Services and Support at Emarsys, discusses the new realities for modern retail marketers, and how marketing automation and predictive marketing are changing the came forever.

C-level executives are extremely busy. They must always be in tune with overall business trends, performance across channels and ensure team members are making smart decisions that will drive their brand forward. Simply stated, the C-level doesn’t have time to mine into in-depth reports and spreadsheets. Manthan created Maya to address this industry pain point. In this episode of TouchPoints TV, Atul Batra of Manthan discusses the need for a more intuitive tool for C-level executives, and walks through a demo of the company’s new AI-powered tool, Maya.

If you see a six-foot-tall robot roaming your neighborhood supermarket in the next few months, it's not an escaped Roomba run amok. It will be a pilot test of Trax Retail's image recognition technology mounted on a robot from Fetch Robotics. The devices are designed to take pictures of store shelves and upload the images to Trax for analysis, allowing out-of-stock and misplaced items to be identified quickly. "The devices allow a retailer to compare their planogram to the 'real-o-gram,'" said Doug Benson, Director of Marketing, Americas for Trax Retail in this TouchPoints TV video from the NRF Big Show 2017. Trax anticipates receiving feedback data from the retailers piloting the technology by mid-2017.

To achieve today's omnichannel objectives, retailers need to look at the store in a more holistic way. The store is playing a significantly different role than in the past. The retailers who have taken advantage of that shift are benefiting, according to Danny Robinson from iQmetrix: "The threat they are facing it doing nothing – being stagnant." iQmetrix is working with retailers such as DSW to add endless aisle and other digital capabilities that help bridge the omnichannel gap.

Retailers today have an array of tools to engage shoppers in the physical store, from kiosks to interactive digital displays to "smart" dressing rooms. What's new is the ability to manage all these experiential retail elements together, with the ultimate goal of maximizing customer convenience and giving shoppers more time to enjoy the store in the ways that they want. During this episode of TouchPoints TV, Brad Fick, President of Direct Source, discusses how the in-store shopper journey continues to evolve, and also how adopting a Unified Commerce approach allows retailers to meet the customer where, when and how she wants to transact.

Historically, retailers used digital signage to push marketing messages, offers and deals to in-store shoppers. However, consumers today are expecting more compelling, timely and relevant content as they're browsing in aisles. During this episode of TouchPoints TV, Jeff Griffin, EVP of Retail Media Networks at Stratacache, discusses the evolution of digital signage and how retailers can use this technology to benefit customers, associates, retailers and brands.

In this episode, RTP’s Editorial Director Andrew Gaffney sits with Linda Kirkpatrick, Executive VP of Merchants & Acceptance at MasterCard, at NRF Big Show. During the discussion, Kirkpatrick shares her insights into how the company is working with top brands to better analyze and augment their data, in order to uncover deeper insights into shopping behaviors and ultimately create more powerful experiences. Kirkpatrick also provides interesting takes on why the mobile wallet is now at an inflection point, as well as how MasterCard is helping merchants address the security and simplicity concerns limiting the growth of e-commerce.